[1] New York University director and acting teacher Marcus Stern and Julia Smeliansky, alumnus of the Moscow Art Theatre School, administer the Harvard master classes with Russian master teacher and film star Igor Zolotivitsky (Esteemed Artist of Russia) and dean of the Moscow Art Theatre School and Bulgakov scholar (People's Artist of Soviet Union) Anatoly Smeliansky.

As of September 2016[update], recent Institute productions have included Young Jean Lee's The Shipment, Moira Buffini's Dying for It, and a stage adaptation of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.

came to Harvard from Yale in 1979, Robert Brustein originally proposed such a model for actors, directors, and dramaturgs connected to the theater and were quickly advised that the idea would never fly.

Acting students follow a two-year sequence carefully designed to help them incrementally increase their knowledge of and facility with text analysis, character development, spontaneity and impulse, period and aesthetic style, and overall expressiveness.

In January 2017, the institute announced they would not be taking on any new admissions for the next academic year after the United States Department of Education gave the graduate program a failing grade due to the oppressive levels of student debt.

In the announcement, Director Zigler said, “What we’re looking at is taking a three-year hiatus so we can come back stronger, better, and with better funding.” [5] Harvard University reported that the median debt for a student graduating from the two-year program in 2016 was approximately $78,000 with an average starting salary of $36,000 a year.

In the fall of the first year, students focus on the work of Sanford Meisner and the acting theory developed by David Mamet and William H. Macy known as Practical Aesthetics.

This work is designed to help students replace intellectual ideas with impulsive and spontaneous choices engendered by focus on and responsiveness to the actor's partner within an analytic framework.

Students also focus on contemporary heightened text by playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Mac Wellman, and spend three weeks on intensive Shakespearean scene study with acting teacher David Hammond.

As part of an ongoing curriculum on the business of acting integrated into their entire two-year program, students are trained in on-camera and voice-over techniques, as well as having meetings with agents, casting directors, and other entertainment professionals.